Adapted from Exam Brief Irish Independent Friday March 07 2008
Biology Exam Paper
TIME 3 HOURS OR 180 MINUTES - MARKS 400
STRUCTURE SECTION A
(100 MARKS OR 25% OF EXAM)
SIX STRUCTURED ‘SHORT-ANSWER’ MULTIPART FILL-IN QUESTIONS
Each question with several small questions that must be answered in the spaces provided on the exam paper. You are instructed to answer any five questions.
ANSWER ALL SIX QUESTIONS:
MAXIMUM TIME: 35 minutes.
STRUCTURE SECTION B
(60 MARKS OR 15% OF EXAM)
Three structured multipart fill-in questions based on the 23 mandatory practical activities.
ANSWERS MUST BE WRITTEN INTO THE SPACES PROVIDED ON THE EXAM PAPER. You are instructed to answer any two questions.
Answer all three questions. Golden Rule: No blank spaces.
Each question carries 30 marks.
Marks will be awarded for your two best scoring questions.
MAXIMUM TIME: 25 minutes.
STRUCTURE SECTION C
(240 MARKS OR 60% OF EXAM)
THIS SECTION CONTAINS SIX ‘LONG-ANSWER QUESTIONS’.
One question from Unit 1 of the Syllabus.
Two questions from Unit 2 of the Syllabus.
Three questions from Unit 3 of the Syllabus.
You are instructed to answer any four questions.
ANSWER FOUR QUESTIONS: Each question carries 60 marks.
MAXIMUM TIME: 2 hours (120 minutes i.e. 30 minutes per question).
You may answer more than four questions. Only do so if you have the time. Marks will be awarded for your four best scoring questions in Section C.
GENERAL ADVICE
NEVER LEAVE THE EXAM CENTRE EARLY
If you have completed four questions in Section C and there is time left over then do another question – try very hard to get this question done in the remaining time as only tackling part of the question leaves you well short of the potential to score full marks. If you are going to make the examiner ‘work harder’ by marking extra questions then make their work easier by making your work neat, tidy, well organised and easy to mark.
THE MAJOR SHORTCUT TO SUCCESS IN LEAVING CERTIFICATE BIOLOGY
Maximum result for minimum effort – that is our aim? Know it all in Unit 1 and Unit 2 of the Syllabus and the Mandatory Practical Activities (MPAs).
Units 1 and 2 plus the MPAs make up just over 40% of the syllabus and are worth at least 80% of the marks and maybe more than 90%.
Units 1 and 2 are quite short and there is only a relatively small number of questions that can be asked from these to fit in with the format of the exam paper.
WHAT ABOUT UNIT 3?
This is your bonus for more points. Unit 3 will supply you with at least one scoring question in Section A – 20 marks. And will also add at least one extra scoring question in Section C – 60 marks. Nine out of every ten students will score at least 10% on these i.e. 8 marks (2% of the exam) .
But two thirds will score an extra 52 (13% overall) on these ‘bonus questions’ as two thirds of each question must be ‘nice’ for two thirds of those sitting the exam.
So your study of Unit C must at minimum be on the areas that you find easy and/or interesting for this is the material needed to get two thirds of the students a C grade or better.
EXAM SUCCESS
The knowledge is gained by blood, sweat and tears working hard in class and after class.
Every day at least one written homework should be done under exam conditions – your brain is the only source of information, quiet, limited time – same as in an exam. The written homework is based on what was covered in class – so work hard in class fully cooperating with your teacher for your benefit.
Revise before doing the written homework.
Then do the written homework under ‘exam conditions’.
Any mistakes you make would be identical to those in an exam – everyone makes mistakes but the wise learn from them.
The mistakes will be either due to lack of knowledge or poor answering skill – not repeating these will definitely improve your answers on exam day.
IT PAYS TO RECHECK YOUR ANSWERS IN THE EXAM
The best strategy during the exam is to recheck each answer before starting the next question – it takes no more than 2 minutes to recheck a Section C question. If you don’t pick up on any mistakes then your answer is as perfect as you can make it.
If you ‘fix’ any mistakes then you know that your marks will be better and you have not wasted your time especially when you consider it takes 2 hours ‘study’ to gain each of the 400 marks in biology.
Two hours for each mark? Yes. You spend a thousand hours in school each year and you are expected to do some more study after school.
A usually sound guide is to try to make the answer fit the space.
To keep the answer brief do not repeat the question in your answer.
If you find that the space is not enough then continue the answer in a convenient place but indicate clearly to which part of the question the material is connected.
Make sure you answer all six questions and every part of each question – No Blank Spaces in Section A and Section B.
STUDYING FROM NOW TO THE EXAM
From now to the exams try to be the ideal student.
Prepare for class by reading ahead.
Work hard in class – 100% cooperation with your teacher.
Revise each day the material covered in biology class.
Revise your experiments.
Revise each chapter until it is at the same high standard as your favourite chapters.
Check out fully the past papers and the sample papers.
The illustrations in your textbook contain a lot of well-presented information. A fast and relatively enjoyable revision method is to study the diagrams, flow charts and photographs - this is not a complete revision as there is other essential material in the text.
POST MOCK BLUES
How can you be expected to do well? You probably had not completed the course, have had no proper revision time and the exam papers were taken over a much shorter time.
Many of the lost marks were due to lack of knowledge – you can fix this by more study. Be alert to the mistakes you made in questions on the topics you had covered well – these are the answering skill mistakes; learn from these and use your written homework as advised to sort this out.
The most valuable aspect of the mocks is that is makes more students study more and take the challenge of the leaving cert more seriously.
